According to this, Yahoo! has a 40% investment in a shark finning company. The two of you out there who are as interesting in sharks as I am will know that this is one of the most deplorable acts committed upon mother nature by humankind — one in which sharks are fished, de-finned alive (i.e. their fins are sliced off with a big ass knife), and dumped back into the ocean, where they will die a slow, agonizing death because they are unable to swim (and therefore, unable to breath).
Why? Because the fins are used to make shark-fin soup, a delicacy in many foreign countries — and because the fisherman in question are often third-worlders who get paid pennies for going shark fishing on tiny canoes which simply can’t hold the whole shark, so they are forced to dump the fish back into the water. If they were harvesting the whole shark, the practice wouldn’t be so bad. Upwards of 100 million sharks are slaughtered each year for their fins.
100 million. How many sharks kill humans every year? Now who’s the monster of the sea?
001 // dotsara // 10.23.2007 // 12:29 PM
Good grief; that’s disgusting.
002 // Matt Robin // 10.24.2007 // 2:05 PM
Dude, I don’t know if I’m one of the two people you’re referring to (maybe/maybe not?)…but I’ve been interested in sharks for most of my life - and the I’m aware that the whole process of shark-finning is not only wasteful, but sick - really sick.
That figure of 100 million is one I’ve known about for awhile and it saddens me every time I think about it. I think a lot more should be done to ban shark-finning altogether.